Buoyed by its prudent fiscal policies and growing global demand for its commodities, Latin America will see solid economic growth in 2010 and 2011, according to new reports issued Wednesday by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. The region generally has resisted the ripple effects of the global crisis better than more-developed nations, the institutions said at their joint annual meeting in Washington. That's a marked contrast to past global crises that weighed heavily on Latin American economies.

Within the framework of a sound policy recommendation, that the United States should pay more attention to nations other than Cuba, Nicaragua and El Salvador in formulating its hemispheric foreign policy, William Pfaff has perpetrated misconceptions about Latin American history that the last generation of scholarship on the region has struggled to overcome ("Confronting the Real Latin Crisis," Op-Ed Page, Jan. 30). Building on a correct characterization of Iberian imperial policy as one of extracting wealth from their colonies, a function primarily of the historical period during which these empires operated, Pfaff hypothesizes that this left an intractable legacy that precluded the modernization of the region.

After dozens of meetings and a few orphaned ideas, the Getty has settled on a theme for a 2017 sequel to the 2011-12 museum exhibition extravaganza known as Pacific Standard Time. It will be "Los Angeles and Latin America," or "L.A./L.A. " for short. "The fact that nearly half of the population of Los Angeles has roots in Latin America is so profound that it warrants a major exhibition and research project with accompanying publications," said Getty Trust head James Cuno. "These are complicated roots, over many generations, and relationships between the U.S. and those antecedent countries have changed considerably over time, so we want to be respectful of those complexities.

Otto Reich, White House special envoy for Latin America, said he would leave to create his own consulting firm. Reich, who said he also planned to work on President Bush's reelection campaign, was appointed special envoy in 2003 after failing to receive Senate confirmation for his nomination as assistant secretary of State for Western Hemisphere affairs.

Latin American presidents Friday sharply criticized industrialized nations for ignoring their crushing economic problems and called for joint action to confront "the dragons of our decline" in the march for prosperity. "The era of waiting for saving help from the outside has ended," said Brazilian President Jose Sarney in the opening session of an eight-nation summit in this Pacific coastal resort.

Last spring, after discovering that Argentina's economic crisis had spurred the government to freeze all bank assets, Norma Albino doused her head in rubbing alcohol and set herself on fire. Albino, who survived, is just one dramatic example of the despair hammering Latin America. The U.S. government would be wise to consider her self-immolation a symbolic reminder: No matter how many global crises the U.S.

Fear of terrorism in Europe and the Mediterranean area is diverting U.S. and Canadian tour groups to safer playgrounds in Latin America, tourist agents and hotel managers here say. Dan Edson, marketing director of Rio's Intercontinental Hotel, said that in just two hours of a single day last week, "I was on the phone with tour directors in St. Louis, Dayton, Ohio, Toronto and Atlanta, all asking for space for groups that had been planning to go to Europe. They are asking for 20 to 200 rooms.

Business opportunities and tourism growth in Latin America have inspired a hotel building boom. More than 100 major projects, many of them associated with major U.S. chains such as Clarion, Holiday Inns and Radisson, are expected to open in the next two years. About half the new properties are in Mexico and Venezuela. Here are the 13 most expensive projects, which have a combined value of $487 million. Hotel/City Price (in Opening Country Rooms millions) date Conrad Resort & Casino/ 300 $75.

IT'S BEEN A LONG time since the days of back-alley abortions in the U.S. Perhaps that's why South Dakota Gov. Michael Rounds signed into law a ban against abortion in his state, with one narrow exception: protecting the life of the pregnant woman. Perhaps Rounds, who was only 19 when Roe vs. Wade was decided in 1973, doesn't remember what it was like to live in a country where women had no right to a safe, legal abortion.

Whoever reads "The Flip Side of Democracy" by Jorge G. Castaneda (Editorial Pages, May 3) will get the impression that in order to appear completely independent from their northern neighbor the nations of Latin America must oppose any and all causes promoted by the United States. The rejection of the Cuban case by most Latin American members at the U.N. Commission of Human Rights was an offense to all decent human beings. Despite Castaneda's suggestion that the human rights violations in Cuba have been concocted by the U.S. Department of State, the abuses perpetrated on the Cuban people by the Castro regime are well documented.